Peter Mulvey in Concert and in Conversation with Charles Barber
Tuesday, May 7, 2024 at 7:30pm
The Russell House, 350 High Street, Middletown
FREE!
Since 1992, songwriter and raconteur Peter Mulvey has perfected his riveting style, honing his music and connecting deeply with audiences over the course of 24 albums, one illustrated book, thousands of live performances, a TEDx talk, opening tours and gigs for luminaries such as Ani DiFranco, Greg Brown, Emmylou Harris, and Chuck Prophet, appearances on NPR, and an annual autumn tour by bicycle. Mulvey has built his life’s work on collaboration with the people in the seats, and an instinct for the things that ignite our potential.
At Wesleyan, Mulvey will perform and be in conversation with Charles Barber, Writer in Residence and Associate Professor of the Practice in Letters. Mulvey will play songs in response to questions from Barber and the audience. Their discussion will include comparisons of the crafts of songwriting and longform narrative writing, and how music and books can address social concerns.
Presented by the Creative Campus Initiative and Charles Barber as part of the courses COL 218 "The Family Memoir: A Contemporary Study of the Genre" and COL 200 "The Narratives of Illness and Recovery."
The Creative Campus Initiative of the Center for the Arts supports cross-disciplinary collaborations that center the arts as a way of teaching, learning, and knowing at Wesleyan University.
Peter Mulvey has been a road-dog and almost-poet since before he can remember. Raised working-class Catholic on the northwest side of Milwaukee, he took a semester in Ireland, and immediately began cutting classes to busk on Grafton Street in Dublin and hitchhike through the country, finding whatever gigs he could. Back stateside, he spent a couple years gigging in the Midwest before lighting out for Boston, where he returned to busking (this time in the subway) and coffeehouses. Small shows led to larger shows, which eventually led to regional and then national and international touring. The wheels have not stopped since.
Mulvey has had a decades-long association with the National Youth Science Camp. He emcees festivals, and hosts his own boutique festival (the Lamplighter Sessions, in Boston and Wisconsin). With an inclination for the eclectic and the vital, Mulvey folds everything he encounters into his work: poetry, social justice, scientific literacy, and a deeply abiding humanism are all on plain display in his art.
In January 2019, Mulvey and his band, SistaStrings (Chauntee and Monique Ross) with Nathan Kilen on drums, decamped to their home turf, the Cafe Carpe, in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin where they spent five days making two records in the tiny back room. The live record, “Peter Mulvey with SistaStrings Live at the Cafe Carpe,” was released on DiFranco's Righteous Babe Records in 2020. The album is a celebration of a world that was temporarily on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic: a small folk club, packed with listeners, and a band shoulder-to-shoulder, playing and singing with intimacy and abandon.
Photo of Peter Mulvey by Paul Reitano.